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153
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Introduction
Measuring, modelling and assessing environmental noise
Effects of noise on human beings
Additional affiliations
January 2010 - December 2012
January 2008 - present
January 2008 - present
Publications
Publications (153)
TraNQuIL2 is an epidemiological research project, which addresses the relation of acute and long-term health effects from transportation noise and the benefit of different mitigation strategies. Within this project, a small validation study on the exposure modelling for various road traffic noise situations in both rural and urban areas of Switzerl...
Air traffic has appreciable environmental impacts, especially regarding gaseous emissions and noise. Recent studies have shown that the energy management during approach is a driving factor regarding environmental impact and is especially challenging for pilots. In a previous project, a newly developed pilot assistance system called LNAS (Low Noise...
Background
Stress is a widespread phenomenon and reality of everyday life, entailing negative consequences for physical and psychological wellbeing. Previous studies have indicated that exposure to greenspaces and nature-based interventions are promising approaches to reducing stress and promoting restoration. However, an increasing percentage of t...
Background
Long-term exposure to transportation noise is related to cardio-metabolic diseases, with more recent evidence also showing associations with diabetes mellitus (DM) incidence. This study aimed to evaluate the association between transportation noise and DM mortality within the Swiss National Cohort.
Methods
During 15 years of follow-up (...
Background
Stress is a widespread phenomenon and reality of everyday life, entailing negative consequences for physical and psychological wellbeing. Previous studies have indicated that exposure to greenspaces and nature-based interventions are promising approaches to reducing stress and promoting restoration. However, an increasing percentage of t...
A brief history of acoustics at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (ETH) in Zurich and at the Swiss Federal Laboratories
for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) in
Dübendorf is presented, focusing on the period between
1920-1970. A first acoustics laboratory was set up by lecturer
Franz Max Osswald at the ETH in the 1920s. The work was
c...
In most studies, forest attractiveness is determined by visual aspects. However, forest perception is not only influenced by visitors’ visual impressions—all sensory dimensions play a role. In order to capture other sensory perceptions, we conducted seven go-along interviews, during which forest visitors were accompanied by an interviewer on their...
Background:
Although plausible from a pathophysiological point of view, robust evidence for effects of transportation noise on mental health remains scarce. Meanwhile, psychiatric diseases are among the most prevalent noncommunicable diseases worldwide, and suicide as a mortality outcome highly connected to mental disorders presents a pressing pub...
Urban areas are continuously growing, and densification is a frequent strategy to limit urban expansion. This generally entails a loss of green spaces (GSs) and an increase in noise pollution, which has negative effects on health. Within the research project RESTORE (Restorative potential of green spaces in noise-polluted environments), an extended...
Urban areas are constantly growing, and densification is a common strategy to limit settlement expansion. However, this leads to loss of green spaces (GSs) and increasing noise pollution, which is detrimental to public health. Within a research project that aims at elucidating the stress-easing potential of green spaces in noise-polluted environmen...
Transportation noise annoyance has been investigated in a widely standardized way over the last decades, which allows studying the evolution of exposure-response relationships over time. A comparison reveals an increase of high annoyance in recent studies for railway and especially aircraft noise, compared to rather stable relationships for road tr...
Aircraft noise affects large areas around airports. Noise calculation programs therefore need to account for air operations with high accuracy. In this contribution, we simulated several thousand single flights with the three aircraft noise calculation programs FLULA2, sonAIR and AEDT, and compared the results among each other and with correspondin...
There is a growing interest for commercial applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, but important foundations for an assessment, among others about noise, are missing. This contribution specifically focuses on a method to measure and model the sound radiation of multicopters. The emission prediction is hereby based on measurements using a multiple...
Environmental noise exposure has been shown to affect children's cognition, but the concept of cognition is multifaceted, and studies on associations with noise are still inconclusive and fragmented. We studied cognitive change within one year in 882 adolescents aged 10–17 years in response to road traffic noise exposure.
Participants filled in a c...
Speed and configuration management is the key to carrying out an approach that is not only safe, but as environmentally friendly as possible, minimising fuel / noise. A new operational concept and FMS functionality is developed and evaluated in piloted simulator trials to support the flight crew in this task under fluctuating wind and weather condi...
Carrying out an approach that is as economical and safe as possible remains a challenge for flight crews, with a multitude of requirements to meet simultaneously. For an aircraft to descend from cruise altitude to touchdown with the lowest possible fuel consumption and noise signature, an approach is required that is both at idle thrust in the idea...
Approach operations at busy airports are louder and less fuel efficient than they technically could be. Carrying out a safe approach under fluctuating wind and weather conditions while following individual air traffic control (ATC) instructions imposes a significant workload on the flight crew, especially with the limited systems support and inform...
The findings of environmental noise exposure and behavioural disorders in children and adolescents are inconclusive, and longitudinal studies are scarce. We studied the response of behaviour and behavioural change within one year in a cohort of 886 adolescents in Switzerland aged 10–17 years in response to road traffic noise exposure.
Participants...
Current best-practice aircraft noise calculation models usually apply a so-called lateral attenuation term, i.e., an empirical formula to account for sound propagation phenomena in situations with grazing sound incidence. The recently developed aircraft noise model sonAIR features a physically based sound propagation core that claims to implicitly...
Noise annoyance is usually estimated based on time-averaged noise metrics. However, such metrics ignore other potentially important acoustic characteristics, in particular the macro-temporal pattern of sounds as constituted by quiet periods (noise breaks). Little is known to date about its effect on noise annoyance and cognitive performance, e.g.,...
Background
Death from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) has been associated with transportation noise. This nationwide cohort, with state-of-the-art exposure assessment, evaluates these associations by noise source.
Methods
Road traffic, railway and aircraft noise for 2001 and 2011 were linked to 4.1 million adults in the Swiss National Cohort, accoun...
Analysis of operational flight data has shown that energy management during approach is a challenging task for pilots. This is detrimental for both fuel consumption and noise emission. The difficulty is increased when shortcuts result in an over-energy scenario. To alleviate the situation, a novel functionality was developed which improves aircraft...
As aircraft noise affects large areas around airports, noise exposure calculations need to be highly accurate. In this study, we compare noise exposure measurements with calculations of several thousand single flights at Zurich and Geneva airports, Switzerland, of three aircraft noise calculation programs: sonAIR, a next-generation aircraft noise c...
The recently developed airline pilot assistance system LNAS (Low Noise Augmentation System) supports pilots in optimizing approaches in terms of fuel consumption and noise emission by predicting the optimal vertical trajectory and best speed, configuration, and landing gear setting. The system continuously updates recommendations to provide the ene...
Approach operations at busy airports are louder and less fuel efficient than they should be. An analysis of daily operations in Zurich was performed aiming to highlight the impact of current approach operations on the environment, cost efficiency and safety. It was possible to measure the impact of speed instructions on fuel burn and noise exposure...
Ambient air pollution is the leading cause of environmental mortality and morbidity worldwide. However, the individual contributions to acute mortality of traffic-related air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) are still debated. We conducted a time-stratified case-crossover study for a population located a...
Transportation noise from road, rail and air traffic can be detrimental to health and wellbeing. Previous studies, including our own, have shown death from specific cardiovascular diseases (CVD) to be associated with these exposures. Now, with 15 years of follow-up, integrated address history and noise exposure data for multiple years corresponding...
The number of operations of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), commonly referred to as “drones”, has strongly increased in the past and is likely to further grow in the future. Therefore, drones are becoming a growing new source of environmental noise pollution, and annoyance reactions to drone noise are likely to occur in an increasing share of the p...
Following the successful first Urban Sound Symposium held at Ghent University in 2019, the second edition in 2021 had to face the challenges of the pandemic. The symposium turned this challenge into an opportunity for giving easier access to practitioners and experts from around the globe who are confronted with urban sound in their professional ac...
Following the successful first Urban Sound Symposium held at Ghent University in 2019, the second edition in 2021 had to face the challenges of the pandemic. The symposium turned this challenge into an opportunity for giving easier access to practitioners and experts from around the globe who are confronted with urban sound in their professional ac...
Since the 2003 heatwave in Europe, evidence has been rapidly increasing on the association between extreme temperature and all-cause mortality. Little is known, however, about cause-specific cardiovascular mortality, effect modification by air pollution and aircraft noise, and which population groups are the most vulnerable to extreme temperature....
sonAIR is a recently developed aircraft noise simulation model designed for single flight simulation while still being applicable for calculation of entire airport scenarios. This paper presents a rigorous validation exercise, wherein roughly 20’000 single flights were simulated using the 22 currently available sonAIR emission models of turbofan ai...
Carrying out an approach that is as economical and safe as possible remains a challenge for flight crews with a multitude of requirements to meet simultaneously. For an aircraft to descend from cruise to touchdown with the lowest possible fuel consumption and noise signature, an approach is required that is both at idle thrust in the ideal speed an...
In dieser Studie wird ein Teil der Datensätze von 4 großen Schweizer und deutschen Fluglärmwirkungsstudien mit Hilfe von logistischen Mehrebenenmodellen re-analysiert. Ziel ist die Untersuchung der Annahmen, dass die Vorhersage a) des Anteils durch Fluglärm hoch belästigter Personen und b) des Anteils durch Fluglärm hoch schlafgestörter Personen ve...
Aims
It is unclear whether night-time noise events, including from aeroplanes, could trigger a cardiovascular death. In this study, we investigate the potential acute effects of aircraft noise on mortality and the specific role of different night-time exposure windows by means of a case-crossover study design.
Methods and results
We selected 24 88...
Prospective evidence on the risk of depression in relation to transportation noise exposure and noise annoyance is limited and mixed. We aimed to investigate the associations of long-term exposure to source-specific transportation noise and noise annoyance with incidence of depression in the SAPALDIA (Swiss cohort study on air pollution and lung an...
Background
In recent years, residential green and availability of neighbourhood green spaces came into focus as a potential means to reduce transportation noise annoyance. Literature suggests that various characteristics of residential green may play a role, namely, greenness of the residential areas as quantified by the normalized difference veget...
Noise exposure is affecting health-related quality of life (HRQoL). There are many modelling approaches linking specific noise sources with single health-related outcomes. However, an integrated approach is missing taking into account measured levels as well as noise annoyance and sensitivity and assessing their independent association with HRQoL d...
Many countries around the world have chosen lockdown and restrictions on people's mobility as the main strategies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. These actions have significantly affected environmental noise and modified urban soundscapes, opening up an unprecedented opportunity for research in the field. In order to enable these investigations to...
Background:
Few epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) on air pollutants exist, and none have been done on transportation noise exposures, which also contribute to environmental burden of disease.
Objective:
We performed mutually independent EWAS on transportation noise and air pollution exposures.
Methods:
We used data from two time points...
Accurate exposure assessment is essential in environmental epidemiological studies. This is especially true for aircraft noise, which is characterized by a high spatial and temporal variation. We propose a method to assess individual aircraft noise exposure for a case-crossover study investigating the acute effects of aircraft noise on cardiovascul...
Exposure to traffic noise is associated with stress and sleep disturbances. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently concluded that road traffic noise increases the risk for ischemic heart disease and potentially other cardiometabolic diseases, including stroke, obesity, and diabetes. The WHO report focused on whole-day noise exposure, but new...
Study Objectives
The present study aimed at assessing the temporal non-rapid eye movement (NREM) EEG arousal distribution within and across sleep cycles and its modifications with aging and nighttime transportation noise exposure, factors that typically increase the incidence of EEG arousals.
Methods
Twenty-six young (19–33 years, 12 women) and 16...
Increasing noise from traffic occurs in parallel with urbanization. Traffic noise may act as a stressor and disturb nighttime sleep, followed by an activation of the sympathetic and endocrine system, thereby increasing a number of biological risk factors. Transportation noise is classified as the second worst environmental risk factor in Europe, an...
Aims:
Chronic exposure to nocturnal transportation noise has been linked to cardiovascular disorders with sleep impairment as the main mediator. Here we examined whether nocturnal transportation noise affects the main stress pathways, and whether it relates to changes in the macro and micro structure of sleep.
Methods and results:
Twenty-six you...
This survey investigates the cross-sectional association between nighttime road, rail and aircraft noise exposure and the probability to be highly sleep disturbed (%HSD), as measured by self-report in postal and online questionnaires. As part of the Swiss SiRENE study, a total of 5592 survey participants in the entire country were selected based on...
It is unclear which noise exposure time window and noise characteristics during nighttime are most detrimental for sleep quality in real-life settings. We conducted a field study with 105 volunteers wearing a wrist actimeter to record their sleep during seven days, together with concurrent outdoor noise measurements at their bedroom window. Actimet...
Standard acoustic indicators are reasonable means for health impact assessment of average transportation noise exposure situations. However, in its Annex I.3, the environmental noise directive admits problem areas (low frequency, tonal or impulsive components, quiet areas), where the application of "supplementary" indices may be necessary. Various...
It is unclear which noise exposure time window and noise characteristics during nighttime are most detrimental for sleep quality in real life settings. We have conducted a field study with 105 volunteers wearing a wrist actimeter to record their sleep during seven days, together with concurrent outdoor noise measurements at their bedroom window. Ac...
There is evidence from the literature that an increased fraction of people is highly annoyed by aircraft noise by given average sound levels than in previous decades. Among possible reasons are changes of the air traffic over the last decades such as the increased number of movements along with a less noisy fleet mix that might be relevant for nois...
Background: Epidemiological research on transportation noise uses different exposure assessment strategies based on façade point estimates or regulatory noise maps. The degree of exposure measurement error and subsequent potentially biased risk estimates related to exposure definition is unclear. We aimed to evaluate associations between transporta...
The contribution of different transportation noise sources to metabolic disorders such as obesity remains understudied. We evaluated the associations of long-term exposure to road, railway and aircraft noise with measures of obesity and its subphenotypes using cross-sectional and longitudinal designs.We assessed 3796 participants from the populatio...
Die aus klimapolitischer Sicht wünschenswerte Verlagerung des Verkehrsaufkommens auf die Schiene geht mit einer Erhöhung der Schallemissionen einher. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurden zur Abbildung der akustischen Charakteristika von Gleiskonstruktionen Simulationsmodelle erstellt. Eine umfänglich gegebene Parametrierbarkeit der Modelle soll zur I...
Aims:
The present study aimed to disentangle the risk of the three major transportation noise sources-road, railway, and aircraft traffic-and the air pollutants NO2 and PM2.5 on myocardial infarction (MI) mortality in Switzerland based on high quality/fine resolution exposure modelling.
Methods and results:
We modelled long-term exposure to outd...
Transportation noise leads to sleep disturbance and to psychological and physiological sustained stress reactions, which could impact respiratory health. However, epidemiologic evidence on associations of objective transportation noise exposure and also perceived noise annoyance with respiratory morbidity is limited. We investigated independent ass...